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Something odd here... check my math. What's happening?

Checked a colony that I'd introduced a caged queen into 14 days ago. There was one solitary bee on the tele cover when I set it down, and it was a golden queen (not the one I'd bought ). In the colony were eggs, capped brood, few/no larvae, and at least 15 queen cells, both capped and uncapped with well-developed larvae in them.

Is this a virgin queen who hasn't killed the other cells? Where'd the eggs come from then? I guess I could've missed a queen cell when I introduced the cage, but I was really thorough I thought.

Can a laying queen who can't be more than two weeks old already be superceded? Something isn't adding up here.

Can a laying queen who can't be more than two weeks old already be superceded? Something isn't adding up here.

Yes, she can. That queen was not the queen of those bees. Sometimes, they leave the queen long enough to lay eggs, and then they replace her. Maybe the sensed something wasn't right about her, maybe the just didn't like her smell. It happens. Same thing sometimes happens with package bees.

Not saying that's what happened to your hive, just trying to answer your question. Are you even sure the queen you introduced is gone? If you saw eggs, then SOMEONE is laying them.

As for the other queen you saw, well, what was the status of the hive before you added the new queen? Was there a queen already there that you replaced? Were they queenless? Were there any queen cells you might have missed. Many possibilities.

I dequeened the colony the day before introducing the caged queen. It's possible the purchased queen is in there... the marking had largely worn off by the time the queens arrived . But the one I saw was not the purchased queen I'm sure, color was different.

I have made walkaway splits or splits with swarm cells and had the hive make many emergency cells. I have several times found a few virgin queens in one hive. I have found as many as 3 queens in one hive where the queen laid supercedure cells and two virgins hatched at close enough to the same time to have not killed the others cell. I have 26 splits that I have made this year and in some of them the virgin queen will not have found emergency cells if they were on a different frame from the one she hatched out of. I usually mark the frame with the most developed swarm cell and so I don't accidentally destroy it and so I know which frame to look at to see if the cell hatched. Often I find that after the cell hatched all the queen cells on that frame have been torn open but that capped emergency cells a few frames away have not been destroyed.